like taxes and showtunes, affronts to God above

[mrspleen]

I admire, but can't bring myself emulate, the folks I know who keep up with FOX News or the right-wing blog scene. Yes, it's a failure of will to not listen fully to opposing points of view before deciding whether they're really opposing, and less idealistically, it's a good idea to know what the enemy is thinking -- but I just can't handle it. I

Comments

[mrspleen]

I knew I'd get you with that one, and yet, the irrestible urge. Doctors will someday come up with a cure for Mike Gravel Syndrome, but for now we sufferers can only struggle on bravely.

I more or less agree with you about the role of government. I just enjoy the lengths to which some folks will go to explain why the task of making sure no one infringes on anybody else's rights is actually trivially small and ever so easily managed, and not, say, an enormous and nearly impossible task that can best be tackled with the tools provided by government.

(Of course, I also harbor a socialist fantasy of government as an enabler of technological advancement and social change, but that's probably just the result of a childhood spent watching too much Star Trek.)

Mostly I want the Noam Chomsky "we don't need government because we're all so dang nice" brigade to square off against the "we don't need laws because I have a rocket launcher strapped to the hood of my Camaro" crew, and decide once and for all what the party line is. I suppose the kids with guns would win, but you have to admit it would be instructive.

[koga]

I cannot tell you how often I have wanted a rocket launcher on the hood of my car.

Or a Camero. Those things are sexy.

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle; Between responsible citizens being nice and people unwilling to take your shit, between strong local government (State) and strong big government (Federal). I don't, as a note, think a small government is necessarily the way to go.

I am just very much in to my personal freedoms, the idea that my government should FOAD before it gets involved in where I stick my pecker or what I do with my private property.